MUSIC; For Opera Companies, Architecture Is Destiny

By Anthony Tommasini

Published: October 8, 2006

ALTHOUGH music lovers here appear to be very excited about the new home of the Canadian Opera Company, people have been taking affectionate pokes at the place, calling it the Ikea Opera House.

In comparison with similar facilities, this 2,000-seat house in the new Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts was built on the cheap, for just $135 million. Though backstage spaces, storage areas and rehearsal rooms are ample, the budget was kept in line by dispensing with frills and using unfancy building materials. Both the auditorium and the commodious lobbies have a clean-lined, smartly modern and, yes, somewhat Scandinavian look.

The center, which includes a small amphitheater and informal performance spaces, opened officially with concerts in June. But the real kickoff came last month, when the Canadian Opera presented its ambitious production of Wagner's ''Ring'' cycle, the first ever in Canada. (The third and last cycle ended a week ago.) The building's existence represents a triumph for the company and for the civic and corporate leaders who rallied to its cause after decades of cajoling.

As opera companies, orchestras and other ensembles grapple with economic challenges and the dwindling of knowledgeable audiences for classical music, it seems clearer than ever that appropriate architecture is crucial to performing arts organizations. Every institution, from an opera company to a private foundation to a major newspaper, should have an articulate mission, a reason for being. But a performing arts institution needs a performing arts space that enables it to fulfill that mission.

Think of the New York City Opera, which performs in the New York State Theater, built primarily as a ballet house. Frustration with the limitations of the State Theater as an opera house has been a constant travail for Paul Kellogg, the City Opera's general and artistic director, who has tried mightily to relocate his adventurous company to a smaller, acoustically vibrant space. After 10 years on the job Mr. Kellogg is retiring at the end of this season with, so far, no new house on the horizon.

But City Opera should take heart. Until the Four Seasons Center opened, the Canadian Opera had made do for more than 40 years with an ill-equipped house unsuited to its mission, the Hummingbird Center. It was built as a place for touring productions. Its auditorium seats nearly 3,200 and feels cavernous. The acoustics were found to be so dull that electronic sound-enhancement systems were installed early on.

The Canadian Opera has never been a house for major international singing stars, partly because it cannot afford them, as the conductor Richard Bradshaw, the general manager, explained in a recent telephone interview. But from its inception the company strove to be innovative and take creative risks. It sought out theater and film directors and explored offbeat and contemporary repertory, winning acclaim for its theatrical daring. Last year it picked up 16 nominations for Dora Mavor Moore Awards, Toronto's Tonys.

''We have tried to be cutting-edge,'' Mr. Bradshaw said. ''We have pushed the boundaries, but with great commitment to the quality of the orchestra and the chorus, and also to our young artists program, which has especially nurtured Canadian singers, like Ben Heppner and Isabel Bayrakdarian.'' Reaching out to audiences has been a priority for Mr. Bradshaw and his predecessors. In 1983 the Canadian Opera invented supertitles and was the first company to use them.

Yet if opera is to be experienced as a viscerally engrossing form of theater, it should ideally be presented in an intimate and acoustically lively space. The Hummingbird Center was disastrous on both counts, Mr. Bradshaw said.

So for decades (Mr. Bradshaw calls it the Thirty Years' War), he wheedled, charmed and bullied government and corporate officials, using, he said, his own version of the Heimlich maneuver in an effort to get his house. There were fits and starts; several plans were readied then abandoned. But Mr. Bradshaw finally prevailed.

The Four Seasons Center is located on a full block in downtown Toronto, not far from the old city hall, and across the street from a popular park. It is accessible to trolley and subway and borders the hip entertainment district. To assure that the acoustics would be excellent, the house was ''built from the inside out,'' Mr. Bradshaw said. Though the company decided to keep the traditional horseshoe design for the auditorium, the architect, Jack Diamond, created a horseshoe layout that afforded good sight lines from almost every seat.

Still, ''at every point,'' Mr. Bradshaw said, ''we all deferred to the acoustician, including the architect.'' It worked. Though the house seats 2,000, it feels smaller than that. The acoustics, designed by Robert Essert, are resonant and clear. Voices leap out over the pit. The words were so audible during the first ''Ring'' cycle that the four operas came across viscerally as the ''music dramas'' Wagner called them.